


r i s e

by bonebo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Betrayal, Mild Gore, if blizzard will not give me a reaper origin story i will write it my damn self, mentions of blackwatch and whatnot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 22:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7124044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonebo/pseuds/bonebo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rift, the fights, the bickering over leadership—Blackwatch versus Overwatch, Morrison versus Reyes—it had all led to this.</p><p>This rubble bites at his ruined flesh through the tattered remains of his armored vest, jagged pieces of metal and stone tearing his mangled skin further; his ears still ring with the boom of the explosion that had destroyed the Swiss base, but it's a distant sound, a noise fading into black. His face is coated with dust, dirt congealed with blood and dried across his skin—his mask is shattered, scattered to the debris, splintered like his chances at fixing this—and the grit under his eyelids burns as he groggily blinks, coats his tongue as he groans.</p><p>Gabriel Reyes knows he's going to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	r i s e

The rift, the fights, the bickering over leadership—Blackwatch versus Overwatch, Morrison versus Reyes—it had all led to this.

This rubble bites at his ruined flesh through the tattered remains of his armored vest, jagged pieces of metal and stone tearing his mangled skin further; his ears still ring with the boom of the explosion that had destroyed the Swiss base, but it's a distant sound, a noise fading into black. His face is coated with dust, dirt congealed with blood and dried across his skin—his mask is shattered, scattered to the debris, splintered like his chances at fixing this—and the grit under his eyelids burns as he groggily blinks, coats his tongue as he groans.

Gabriel Reyes knows he's going to die.

Even with the enhancements of the super-soldier program, and the mutilations of the experiments he's undergone, he knows it's not enough to save him; he can feel his lifeblood soaking into the ground around him, feel his limbs getting cold. His bloodshot eyes search the settling rubble, blearily, and find a shock of blonde hair, just out of arm's reach—hair he knows is coarse like hay through his fingers and smells like a country summer's day—and the notion that he will die here, with Morrison so far away but beside him, that they will go almost-together into the darkness, seems like a kindness too good to be true.

A final mercy—the universe's atonement, perhaps, for every hurt that he's been forced to face, every time he's been denied. Reyes tastes blood on his teeth when he smiles, and keeps Jack's face in his mind as he closes his eyes.

__

He wakes up in hell.

The pain is the first thing he knows, and it's blinding—fire racing across him, through him, from his shattered ankles to his lacerated face and back again. His eyes push aside pounds of dust to pry open and he screams aloud, because he's engulfed in raging flame, surrounded by blistering gold and pinned by some weight across his shoulders, his noises of distress deafened by a distant yelling that sounds as agonized as he feels.

But then there's more contact, fingertips across his face; the gold wanes, the fire dims, and he can just barely make out the image of Angela, looming over him with tears in her eyes—

He'd never noticed how blue her eyes were, before.

Her lips move frantically—the yelling in his ears fades, becomes words that become pleas, desperate calls of his name. 

_“Gabriel,”_ she sobs, and the strain in her voice makes his very soul ache, makes him struggle to rise, to help her; but his body revolts against the very thought of it, and lays still like wreckage in the dirt. “Gabe—I'm sorry, please, I'm _so sorry._..”

 _Sorry for what,_ he tries to ask, but can't—another wave of pain claims him, clawing up his battered body and pulling a hoarse, ragged scream from his throat, wrenching repentance from him. The sound is strangled by blood and he can see Angela's wet eyes widen in alarm, watches the tears streak her cheeks as he gurgles and chokes on copper.

“I tried my best, Gabe,” she whispers, voice a tearful warble. “I didn't mean for this to happen, I swear I didn't—”

“Angela, just go.” This voice is new and achingly familiar, finally draws his eyes away; Morrison is there, kneeling on his other side, and Reyes is momentarily struck by how _unharmed_ he looks, how healthy and intact—

But then his body surges again, yields and convulses with hot agony, and Morrison is gone from his sight as his gaze frantically cuts down to himself—he has to see what is hurting him so badly, what makes him feel like he's being ripped to pieces—

The answer is everything.

His vest has been cut away, revealing his torso—and the bone that splinters up through it, ribs sluggishly sliding back into place in the confines of his chest. He finds he can do nothing but stare at it, at the skin grey and mangled and coated in dull crimson, the fractures shifting beneath his pale flesh; he can watch his heart beating through the ragged holes in his chest, the staccato, uneven pulse racing in his panic, gushing even more blood out of his shattered ribcage. He doesn't—can't—look away when Morrison speaks again, voice slow and sad.

“I'm sorry, Gabe.” The click of a cocked gun echoes in the ruined remains of the facility; Reyes can hear Angela gasp, then feels cold metal's bite against his temple. “I didn't want it to end this way...but this is for your own good, now.”

The shot fires before he can speak. Gabriel Reyes dies in the cold mountains of Switzerland.

__

He wakes again, later, skin chilled by snow and delirious—he sees a sky of steely blue overhead, and thinks of Morrison's eyes, and flounders in the snow as he tries to get up, to go, to move. His hands slip on red ice and his cry of pain is weak when he hits the ground again, seeing stars as his head connects with the rubble he's surrounded by.

When he fades next, it's mercifully quick, a reprieve from the cold as his body slips back under to heal and repair the damage he's done. A gunshot rings in his ears, loaded with empty apologies.

__

The night is broken by a sharp, gasping breath.

Bloodshot eyes snap open, and he breathes raggedly—the cold air burns his lungs like fire, and it sets him ablaze with the pain of living. He lurches up, hands groping over his own body desperately, searching and slipping in the snow that's piled over him; but the wounds that had horrified him, the holes torn into his skin, are gone, knitted together with only raised, coarse grey scars to serve as a reminder they'd been there at all. He sits still for a moment, just breathing and blinking and realizing that he's alive, despite it all, despite everything; then one shaking hand reaches up, brushes over his temple, his fingertips feeling over the site of Morrison's betrayal. 

Only a slight pit remains in the skin, the pebbled feeling of old scabs, but it doesn't matter.

He remembers.

With a snarl of exertion, he heaves himself up, levering his body out of the snow; his bones and joints crack and break like hard frost, the pain making his vision swim. He can hear the sirens in the distance, no doubt coming to investigate the ruins and search for bodies—he knows Morrison is gone, and Angela too, far away from this wreckage. 

He doesn't intend to stay, either. He staggers to his feet and rises a new man.

He leaves Gabriel Reyes as a memory lying dead in the snow, hollow and betrayed and forgotten; and he emerges as the vicious and hardened Reaper, a wraith cold from heart to bones and determined to have revenge.


End file.
